Saints Spotlight: Professor Alice König
Professor Alice König is a lecturer and Director of Impact in the School of Classics. In this month’s Saints Spotlight, she discusses mentoring students through Honours modules and the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) programme, and collaborating with students and creative partners to transform how we understand war and peace.
How did your St Andrews story start?
Some 25 years ago, my then boyfriend, now my husband and colleague, was offered a lectureship at St Andrews. I’ll be honest: I had never heard of the University before. After commuting between Cambridge and St Andrews for a year, I successfully applied for a job in the School of Classics, and we have never left. It’s a glorious place to bring up a family.
What are your current priorities at the University?
I teach Latin language and literature and Roman history, and I run several research projects exploring war storytelling, ancient peace history, and war and peace teaching. I also spend a lot of time championing impact work, both through my own projects and by supporting colleagues to develop impact projects of their own.
Through Honours modules and the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) programme, I love mentoring students to build bridges between their studies and society, helping them find ways for their academic work to have a real-world impact. I take the same approach to my own research, collaborating with theatre-makers, artists, photojournalists and NGOs to change the ways in which we tell stories about conflict (ideally not like Nolan’s Odyssey!) and to increase peace literacy.
What is the focus of your research at St Andrews?
My research focuses on our individual and collective habits of visualising war and peace, as explained in this Visualising War and Peace podcast. I examine how conflict narratives are told across different media and contexts; but, above all, I am interested in what they do to us. The stories that we tell about war and peace do not simply reflect the world we live in; they help to shape it, by influencing how we think, feel and behave.
As well as exploring the harmful potential of certain kinds of conflict narrative, I am interested in their capacity to move the needle towards positive change and more peaceful futures. Stories are world-building! We live in a world saturated with war storytelling; just think how different things could be if we told more stories about peace.
Tell us about your proudest achievement.
Career-wise, it is probably the virtual Museum of Peace, which my students and I built, and is now visited by people from all over the world.
Where is your favourite spot in St Andrews?
Near a gathering of oystercatchers at the very edge of the waves on West Sands, facing back towards town.